CP Group’s Chris Eachus Has a Thing for Atlanta’s Office Market

Dreary statistics define the Atlanta office market. Rents are lower than the national average. Vacancy rates are higher than in most markets. Absorption has been negative.

But Chris Eachus, founding partner of office landlord CP Group, is doubling down on office space in the Sun Belt megalopolis.

CP Group is in the midst of renovating the former CNN Center, a 1 million-square-foot property in Downtown Atlanta. In 2022, the company bought Bank of America Plaza in the city’s Midtown district and initiated a $50 million capital improvement program.

In Eachus’s latest bet on an office rebound, CP Group took ownership of Piedmont Center, a 2.2 million-square-foot complex in Atlanta’s Buckhead district. The company won the property at a foreclosure auction with a $200 million bid.

Eachus, 46, admits that the office market has fallen on tough times. But, he argues, the worst is over for Atlanta, a metro area of more than 6.3 million that boasts a strong economy that belies the struggles of its office sector.

“We think today is a great time to invest in office buildings in the Sun Belt,” Eachus told Commercial Observer. “Pricing is not only at a cyclical low but also a historical low. The prevailing winds are going to blow in favor of the office market.”

Atlanta’s office market is improving, but it continues to struggle through the pandemic hangover. The metro area’s office vacancy rate was 25.2 percent in the first quarter of 2025, compared to a national average of 20.8 percent, according to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. Meanwhile, Class A rents in the Atlanta office market stood at $35.77 per square foot, compared to a national average of $43.35.

In one example of just how dire the Atlanta office picture became during the work-from-home era, in 2023 the city itself bought the 41-story 2 Peachtree building downtown with a plan to convert the tower from offices to residences.

Eachus doesn’t downplay the challenges facing Atlanta’s office market. He said it is volatile because it’s home to so many large users who are headquartered elsewhere, and those tenants are prone to pulling back in a downturn such as the pandemic.

“It’s a high-beta market,” he said. “You have a lot of Fortune 1000 companies here, but not a lot of them are headquartered here. In a recession, the satellite offices get closed first. Atlanta sometimes suffers when you have these economic pullbacks.”

Eachus studied business at Emory University in Atlanta, and he has been closely monitoring the Atlanta office market since 2006, when he moved back to town to run the Atlanta office of CP Group, which is headquartered in Boca Raton, Fla.

While the past half-decade has been difficult for office landlords, he sees signs of life. On the supply side, the soft market has discouraged new construction. Meanwhile, on the demand side, many workers are coming back to the office, whether by choice or because their employers insist.

“We own close to 20 million square feet of office space,” Eachus said. “It’s palpably better. The number of inbound calls, tours, [letters of intent], executed leases — all of that has been trending to the positive. Our parking decks are more full than they’ve ever been. I feel I actually ride with other human beings in the elevator from time to time.”

Madelyn Shields Bearn, associate director of market analytics at CoStar’s Atlanta office, agrees.

“The Atlanta office market is on slightly stronger footing than last year,” she said. “Leasing activity is up, and availability is down.”

As office users return to the market and as workers move back into their cubicles, CP Group’s strategy of repurposing dated assets makes sense, Shields Bearn said.

“With very little speculative office construction, recently renovated office spaces are likely to be among the most competitive buildings on the market over the next several years,” she said.

The uptick in office attendance spurred Eachus’s interest in Piedmont Center, a 14-building campus on 46 acres in Buckhead, the commercial district about nine miles north of downtown. Tenants include Accenture and Kaiser Permanente, and rents are in the mid-$30s per square foot.

The campus had been developed over decades, and as recently as 2021 it was valued at north of $600 million. But as interest rates spiked and the office market’s struggles continued, Morgan Stanley this year foreclosed on a $331 million loan on the property.

Piedmont Center’s vacancy is near 40 percent. Eachus says one of the first orders of business will be to shore up the tenant roster — in part by adding signs and placemaking activities, but most importantly by adding restaurants to the mix. Piedmont Center was built in an era when on-site amenities weren’t a high priority for suburban office tenants.

“There’s not one sit-down restaurant in the entire project,” Eachus said. “To be at the center of one of the most affluent submarkets in the Southeast, directly on a major thoroughfare, and not have a restaurant — to me, that seems like something we should fix.”

Now, Eachus said, his research shows dining options are a major factor in tenants’ decisions.

“Our view is that in today’s office building climate, tenants want more food options,” he said. “What happened during COVID was not the end of the office building market. It was the evolution of the office building market. But we can’t be naïve. People are more hyper-aware of what they’re getting, because they’ve had the luxury to re-evaluate it. So you need to pivot your offering. This has been a great wake-up call.”

Eachus also is spending a lot of time thinking about restaurants for The Center, the downtown office complex that CP Group acquired in 2021 and that the firm rebranded from its former CNN Center name. CP Group acquired it with Rialto Capital Management of Florida, paying $164 million total for the property. The address is near the Georgia World Congress Center, Centennial Olympic Park and the sports venues where the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons play.

“From a demographics and number of people per day perspective, it is absurdly busy,” Eachus said. “Oddly, that particular location has been incredibly underserved from a food and beverage standpoint.”

The complex long had been occupied by CNN, but the cable network moved out, and its iconic sign came off the property. As the property is redeveloped, it’ll have a new eye-catching feature: The Center is adding LED billboards that will project 12-story ads on the outside of the buildings.

The four-building complex has been under construction since late last year. Eachus said he’s still working through the mix of uses in the new project, which will include office and retail but also could encompass residential offerings.

“I know there’s a lot of damage and destruction to be repaired,” Eachus said. “But it does feel like the fire has been put out, and new trees are starting to grow.”

Jeff Ostrowski can be reached at jostrowski@commercialobserver.com.